ANSYS Composite PrepPost Product Features

Efficient Engineering of Layered Composite Structures Unique Material Definition Function-

ality, Tailored for Modeling Layered
Composite materials are formed from the combination of two or more Composite Structures
layered materials, each having very different properties. Composite • Basic materials with engineering
materials have become a standard for manufacturing products that constants
are both light and strong. Additionally, composites provide much flex- • Uniaxial fabrics with vendor-
ibility, enabling products with complex shapes, such as boat hulls or specific data
surfboards, to be manufactured. • Multiaxial fabrics with vendor-
specific data
Among the many challenges • Standard laminate templates
of designing products from
composites is defining the Coordinate Systems
specifications of each layer • Cartesian, cylindrical, spherical
that constitutes the composite
material. To engineer layered Oriented Element-Set Concept
composites, a designer must • Definition of material application
find the best combination of direction independent of shell
lamina, including the number normal
of layers involved as well as the • Definition of material 0° direction
thickness and relative orienta- • Overlapping multiple oriented
Thickness visualization on the global element sets
tion of each layer. As with ho-
structure • Unique possibility of easy
mogeneous materials, stresses,
deformations and other perfor- asymmetric laminate definition
mance indicators will help determine a product’s performance under • No need of ply subdivision
actual working conditions. A range of failure criteria, from simple to
more advanced formulations, is usually used to study how the layer Surface and 3-D Modeling
material and their orientations affect the design of the product. • Generation of layered solid
composite models from layered
ANSYS® Composite Prep- shell models
Post software provides all the • Layer-wise post-processing of
necessary functionality for the layered solid and layered shell
analysis of layered composite models
structures. An intuitive interface • CAD geometry import (STEP, IGES):
efficiently defines materials, - Modeling of core plies
plies and stacking sequences; with variable thickness
it also offers a wide choice of - Cut-off rules
state-of-the-art failure criteria.
ANSYS solvers provide the foun- Draping and Flat-Wrap Functionality
dation for accurate results, while • Analysis of draping, write and load
additional computations for the draping data
failure criteria are performed • Analysis of fiber-angle correction
within the ANSYS Composite processing
PrepPost application. • Flat-wrap analysis and export of plies
with distortion
The post-processing capabili- Layer orientation and layer-wise
ties of ANSYS Composite PrepPost failure criteria analysis on a complex
software allow an in-depth inves- hull shape
Product Features tigation of a product’s behavior.
Simulation results can be looked at
Comprehensive Composite Failure globally or viewed in detail down
Analysis Capabilities to the layer level, which enables
• Inverse reserve factors (IRF), reserve users to accurately identify the rea-
factors (RF) and margin of safety (MOS) sons a structure might fail. Design
for composite failure criteria at all iterations can easily be performed
integration points of all layers to take into account geometric
• Arbitrary combinations of failure criteria changes or material variations.
- Max. strain, max. stress, Tsai–Wu, Results visualization on the global
Tsai–Hill, Hashin, LaRC, Cuntze structure Useful for the analysis of an end
- Puck 2-D and 3-D for UD and weave product, the draping capabilities
materials of ANSYS Composite PrepPost
- Core failure and face sheet wrinkling allow users to correctly identify
for sandwich structures the exact orientation of every
• Multiple load case consideration layer of the composite. A flat-wrap
- Four result values per in-plane data capability and the ability to create
point ply books assist in product
- Maximum IRF of all criteria of all layers manufacturing.
- Active failure mode
- Layer index with highest IRF The product works with the
- Critical load case ANSYS® Mechanical™ interface in
• Simple definition, configuration and Overview of the user interface and
the ANSYS® Workbench™ environ-
combination of desired composite material definitions
ment. Composite structure designs
failure criteria
can be automated through integration with the ANSYS Mechanical
• Unique method to evaluate interlaminar
APDL interface for advanced scripting.
normal 3-D stress in curved laminates
based on shell elements
• Element sampling enables ply-based
The ANSYS Advantage
strain, stress and IRF visualization
With the unequalled depth and unparalleled breadth of engineering
• Result visualization for each ply of
simulation solutions, companies are transforming their leading-edge
the laminate
design concepts into innovative products from ANSYS and processes
• Text plot highlights critical failure
that work. Today, almost all of the top 100 industrial companies on the
mode, layers and load case
“FORTUNE Global 500” invest in engineering simulation as a key strat-
• Sensors for the evaluation of material egy to win in a globally competitive environment. They choose ANSYS
quantity and cost as their simulation partner, deploying the world’s most comprehensive
• Pythontm scripting interface (for user- multiphysics solutions to solve their complex engineering challenges.
specific failure criteria) The engineered scalability of solutions from ANSYS delivers the flexibil-
Ply-Book Generation ity customers need, within an architecture that is adaptable to the pro-
• Generation of individually formatted cesses and design systems of their choice. No wonder the world’s most
ply books in restructured text format successful companies turn to ANSYS — with a track record of 40 years as
• Can be exported in various formats the industry leader — for the best in engineering simulation.
(*.html, *.pdf, *.odt, etc.)
Scripting and Automation
• Python scripting interface to automate
model definition

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